# Tag Info

Accepted

### What's the difference between Inactive and HoldForm?

Updated Both Hold and Inactive block evaluation; the key difference is that Inactive is ...
• 8,372

### Why is Unevaluated[#]& different from Unevaluated?

I thought that for any function f we could use "f" interchangeably with "f[#]&". That ...
• 225k
Accepted

### What are the cool kids talking about when they use ##&[]?

Try this: Map[If[#==1,Unevaluated@Sequence[],#]&,{1,2,3}] Note the output. The 1 is gone. That's because ...
• 25.1k
Accepted

### What's the difference between these 2 associations?

Preamble The real problem here seems somewhat deeper than what the (mostly correct) observations in comments indicate. In Mathematica, a number of objects, which are so-called raw objects (including ...
• 112k
Accepted

### Can't inject EncryptedObject

I think the problem might be related to a bug in FullForm when applied to a ByteArray object: ...
• 67k

### What's the difference between Inactive and HoldForm?

One difference is that NDSolve directly supports Inactive. It can be used to specify operators such as divergence ($\nabla\cdot$...
• 225k
Accepted

### Why is Unevaluated[#]& different from Unevaluated?

The two are not equivalent. Even if f lacks special attributes. Assuming no special attributes are present, a function's arguments are always evaluated before the ...
• 1,267
Accepted

### Why does Unevaluated applied (@@) to a held expression not work?

The action of the symbol Unevaluated is due to a special rule within the evaluator that occurs at a very specific time during the evaluation process. ...
• 67k
Accepted

### Pure functions are not functions?

A response to this comment: I understand that there are workarounds. I am wondering whether I am misinterpreting the manual. Yes. The use of the word "function" in the manual may be confusing ...
• 225k
Accepted

### How to uncompress strings safely (without any evaluation)?

This is definitely a bug. Here's a slightly simpler workaround than those suggested in the comments: Uncompress[str, HoldComplete] // InputForm Generally ...
• 13.4k
Accepted

### Easy printing of executable code

You could define a function similar to Echo with the difference that it won't evaluate its argument before printing. ...
• 225k

### Why is Unevaluated[#]& different from Unevaluated?

The head Unevaluated is a symbol with the HoldAllComplete attribute. The head ...
• 13.5k
Accepted

### Evaluated vs. unevaluated Association

Summary The confusion we observe here is largely due to ambiguous use of the symbol Association as an expression head. On the one hand, ...
• 67k
Accepted

### What is the potential usage of ReplaceAllUnheld in Developer Utilities Package?

Thank you for bringing this function to my attention! It lets us use ReplaceAll without disturbing or even traversing held expressions. This is huge! I have ...
• 264k
Accepted

### HoldPattern vs Unevaluated

HoldPattern is a persistent head that prevents evaluation of its argument(s) yet is transparent to pattern matching. Unevaluated...
• 264k
Accepted

### Pattern does not match with Orderless head

I am betting that this is almost certainly an optimization short-cut. If Orderless had to try every ordering it would be extremely slow when there are a moderate ...
• 264k
Accepted

### Defer, Hold, Unevaluated, Inactivate -- which one when?

The SO duplicate Preventing evaluation of Mathematica expressions does a nice job of explaining the differences among and use-cases for Defer, ...
• 21.6k

### What's the difference between Inactive and HoldForm?

Although mfvonh's answer is a nice summary of Inactive formal properties, I think it misses several important points, which are both shown in the "Scope" and "...
• 2,661
Accepted

### How to properly inject iterators into table?

General I think that one can achieve the goal much easier if we reformulate the request. A variable is IMO not a proper object to store an iterator in the form of expression. What you really need is ...
• 112k
Accepted

### How to see a code preview (in Experimental`Explore[] or related GUI)

Quick fix is to use e.g. Inactivate and friends: ...
• 133k
Accepted

### Why one needs two Unevaluated to show 1+1 correctly in TreeForm?

This issue is known and it is a defect of TreeForm like Leonid already said. Let me give an illustrative example that shows the same behavior. Let us assume you ...
• 111k
Accepted

### Matching HoldPattern expressions

Clarification of HoldPattern usage: HoldPattern[expr] is equivalent to expr for pattern ...
• 133k
Accepted

### How to get a unevaluted expression from a compressed string?

You need to wrap the expression Unevaluated before passing it to Compress, which means defining your own function instead of ...
• 17.9k
Accepted

### Confusion about HoldFirst attribute of Set

The problem is not related to Set in general but to how Set works with Part on a left hand ...
• 133k

### Expanding a sum without evaluating it

may be Sum[With[{i=i},HoldForm[i^2]],{i,1,5}] But this uses a wrapper. I do not think there is a way without using Hold and ...
• 110k
Accepted

### Perform localized, evaluation-leak free replacements

Here's a way making use of Block to cause f to be inert: ...
• 45.5k
Accepted

### Getting terms and only evaluate specific parts of a series

times[{i_}] := i times[{i__}] := Inactive[Times][i] Sum[times@Table[2 i - 1, {i, n}]/times@Table[2 i, {i, n}], {n, 5}] If you prefer ...
• 52.7k

### What's the difference between Inactive and HoldForm?

I think the basic answer to your question is: 1) If you want absolute control over revaluation, nothing beats good old HoldComplete. It will be there to the end of time. 2) Inactive meant for much ...
• 13.4k
Accepted

### Held keys in associations

Wrap the entire key in Hold, if you really want to keep things that might evaluate in the keys of an association (HoldPattern is ...
• 10.5k
Use HoldForm applied to each fraction to keep the fractions from combining. HoldForm[1/2] HoldForm[3/4] to produce  \frac{1}...